1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a cleaning and drying apparatus for a substrate holder chuck and a cleaning and drying method for the substrate holder chuck.
2. Background Art
Generally, the conventional substrate holder chuck capable of transferring a plurality of substrates, such as semiconductor wafers, includes at least a lower holding member for holding the substrates and a plurality of side holding members for holding peripheral parts of the substrates on both sides of the lower holding member. Each of the above holding members is provided with a plurality of holding grooves in a row.
In the past, when cleaning and subsequently drying the above-constructed substrate holder chuck, a process of spraying a cleaning liquid to the holding members for the substrate holder chuck via cleaning-liquid nozzles and a process of ejecting dry gas to the holding members via dry-gas nozzles were repeatedly carried out for every holding members, i.e., one lower holding members and two side holding members, as shown in Japanese Patent Publication No. 2000-12668, claims, paragraph No.0049 and FIG. 7.
In the conventional cleaning and drying apparatus (method) of this kind, however, since the cleaning process and the drying process are carried out repeatedly and the cleaning-liquid nozzles and the dry-gas nozzles are separated from each other and since the operation of the cleaning-liquid nozzles depends on a supply pressure of the cleaning-liquid, it takes a lot of time to clean and dry the substrate holder chuck. Additionally, due to the consumption of much time for the cleaning and drying operations of the chuck, a throughput of the whole apparatus is reduced.